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Penn Program on Regulation Launches Initiative on Regulatory Excellence

The Penn Program on Regulation (PPR) at the University of Pennsylvania Law School announces the launch of an international initiative to identify the attributes of a best-in-class regulator. The project team solicits your input.

The Best-in-Class Regulator Initiative is sponsored by the Alberta (Canada) Energy Regulator (AER), an industry-funded organization responsible for regulating the development of Alberta’s energy resources. AER recently awarded $1.2 million to PPR to fund this program, which seeks to identify ways that regulators can measure attributes of regulatory excellence and improve regulatory performance.

“We are committed to becoming a best-in-class regulator,” said AER Chief Executive Officer Jim Ellis in a recent press release about the project available here. The initiative is designed to help the agency achieve that goal. AER recently selected University of Pennsylvania Law School Professor Cary Coglianese to lead the new initiative. SRA member Adam Finkel serves as Executive Director of PPR and is a senior fellow at the Law School; he plans to concentrate his effort on how a world-class regulator can use risk assessment, cost-benefit analysis, and decision analysis to their best advantage.

The initiative is designed to “combine research, expert dialogue and public engagement” in order to identify the features of outstanding regulators around the world, according to the release. The project team welcomes anyone to visit the project website here to share comments about what constitutes regulatory excellence and how it can best be achieved. The site will also be used to share results from the project as they emerge.